CCDF Planning Cycle 2025-2027:

Ensuring High Quality Access for School-Age Youth

Between January and July 1st 2024, states will be updating their Child Care Development Fund plans for the 2025-2027 cycle. Plans go into effect October 1, 2024. Stakeholder feedback is a required part of the process.

CCDF Quick Background:

• States have a total of about $12 billion in federal funds through CCDF ($8.75B in discretionary and $3.5B in mandatory). The funds are designed to support working and learning adults with connecting their dependent children age 0-13 with high quality, accessible, affordable, and developmentally appropriate care settings.
• Working parents have great needs for school-age child care to maintain their full time employment. This includes care before school, afterschool, over the summer and also during school vacations and other non-traditional hours. Voters are even willing to tax themselves for these types of supports.
• 45% of those served nationally with CCDF funds are school-aged.

Below we offer some tools:

1. For state level administrators to help engage the school-age community and ensure the youth they are serving with school-age funds are accessing the highest quality care possible.
2. For school-age providers to identify areas where their input, experience and voice might be particularly impactful in supporting states to understand the specific needs of the school-age field.

The overall goal is meaningful alignment between early care and school-age systems that support providers, families and youth as they transition and develop along the continuum from ages 0-13 and beyond.

CCDF 2025-2027 Collaboration Playbook - for child care administrators and state partners

Across the country, states are working hard to ensure school-age students have the supports they need to sustain and build upon the gains of high quality early learning. This playbook provides examples from 10 states illustrating opportunities for school-age alignment in overall policy and in the CCDF State Plans. The playbook highlights six strategies for advancing school-age care: (1) relationship building, (2) coordination across agencies, (3) improving access, (4) professional development, (5) workforce development, and (6) quality systems.
 

Provider Level Take action Tips

CCDF funds serve high numbers of school-age students age 5-13. If you are a provider serving school-age youth, now is a great time to work with your statewide afterschool network and state child care agency on how to ensure all youth have the best possible resources and experiences while in developmentally appropriate care settings. Read our blog and see our 3 steps for taking action in this planning cycle.

 

State Planning:

These plans provide exciting opportunities to discuss school-age child care access, licensing requirements, training requirements, professional development supports, school-age quality systems, coordination across systems, and more. This planning cycle includes more detailed questions around specific workforce supports as well.

Additionally, states will review either the market rate price of care or use an alternative methodology that can account for truer costs of care, including costs of staff pay and benefits, training and professional development, curricula and supplies, licensing requirements, and quality levels. This work may align with a plan requirement for states to conduct a narrow cost analysis, which requires states to consider how program costs change for different geographies, ages, settings, and levels of quality.

The plans also require states to do a needs assessment and account for how to spend 9 percent of their overall funds, which must be used for investments in quality.

All of these components are expected to involve stakeholders and will have richer data and outcomes if school-age programs are involved.

School-Age Perspective Key Areas of Note:

• School-age children benefit from important supports that look distinct from early care. For example: mental health and wellness, connections to the school-day, media and social media literacy, identity and belonging, youth choice and voice, literacy and STEM, and early adolescent development.
• School-age staff may have have different backgrounds than early care educators and require different types of training and credential. While many may be full time professionals with advanced degrees and long histories in positive youth development, other school-age educators may be more likely to be part time and/or seasonal.
• School-age settings may be in mixed-age settings, stand alone school-age center based settings, parks and recreation spaces or public schools, all which may require different considerations for physical space.
• Parents with multiple children including early care and school-age and providers serving mixed-age settings require coordinated systems to navigate policies and opportunities.
• Demand for afterschool programs is at an all time high, even programs become harder to access for issues of affordability, availability and transportation

Resources:

• Afterschool Alliance School-Age Child Care Issue Page - Learn more about the context of school-age care
• NCASE State Data Profiles - How many school-age children does your state serve with CCDF
• Child Care Aware Tracker of CCDF State Plan - See when comments are due for your state's draft plan
• Center for Law and Social Policy CCDF State Funding Chart - See the increased and total funds your state will be receiving in its FY 2024 allocation
• America After 3 PM - Afterschool demand and supply in your state
• Afterschool provider survey data - Providers report the need for support for the school-age workforce is crucial
• American Institutes for Research School-Age Quality Systems
• NCASE Key Considerations for Addressing School-Age Needs in Licensing Regulations
• Build Initiative: Continuous Improvement in OST

Find Your:

• Statewide Afterschool Network
• State Child Care Administrative Agency
• Office of Child Care Regional Program Managers

See Some Current School-Age References in State 2025-2027 CCDF Draft Plans

• School-age/Afterschool References
  • For example: Missouri's Section 7.2.1 on Quality Improvement Activities lists "The Lead Agency supports training and professional development through both in-person and online formats. Training is provided by Quality Specialists that work in the Child Care Collaborative Networks, Quality Specialists that work with the Quality Assurance Report, Child Care Health Consultants, and the Missouri Afterschool Network. Online/on-demand 

    training will continue to be developed and added to the professional development registry."